Music with Minnesotans: Christine Rosholt

Full disclosure: I have known Christine since we were just babes in college. We're exactly the same age - ok, I'm two weeks older. And she dated my big brother at the Art Institute of Chicago.

It was about this time of year that the three of us drove to one of my gigs and we had Handel's Messiah cranked in the car just singing at the top of our lungs.

I thought to myself, this girl's got some pipes! And after working in photography, theatre, performance art and a few gigs with the Minnesota Opera, Christine is now one of our most celebrated jazz singers in the region.

She has thousands of jazz songs on her iPod, but loves classical music and tells me it helps her relax and escape a bit too.

Christine Rosholt and Kevin HallPhoto courtesy the artist

I remember my first day on air when I played a Mozart aria and received a breathless call from Christine even before the last note sounded wanting to know what the piece was because it was used in an incredibly touching moment in the movie "Shawshank Redemption."

Christine's eagerness and delight in the music was so contagious, I have found myself often thinking of her enthusiastic listening when I program my mornings on Classical MPR.

Christine has just finished a project of new songs in a trans-Atlantic collaboration with British songwriter Kevin Hall. She calls the music "Pazz" because it's a bit of both pop and jazz. Her release party is next Thursday, December 1 at the Dakota where she'll sing all the songs, as well as a number of her other hits.

Join me next week with Barbara Mraz, a deacon at St. John the Evangelist in Saint Paul. Barb is a life-long movie fan and brings faith, theology and movies together in a course she's created, so her playlist is filled with some of the best movie scores ever written.